Frequently, during drilling beyond a cased and cemented portion of a wellbore, the fluid losses become unacceptable. This forces the drilling operation to be suspended, as the exposed zone where the fluid loss is happening is isolated. One way to do this is to lower a liner with or without a liner hanger so that there is some overlap with existing casing and expand the liner or hanger into the existing well casing. The downside of this procedure is that the well diameter is now reduced by the wall thickness of the liner, despite the expansion of the liner or its hanger.
Situations requiring liners or the like can also occur when, during drilling, a very unconsolidated formation needs to be traversed to get to the producing zone.
The present invention addresses these and other situations by allowing placement of tubulars in a wellbore to be secured to existing casing or tubulars in the wellbore, without a decrease in the inside diameter in the wellbore due to the newly added tubular. Various versions of a shoe that connects to the casing or tubular in the wellbore, allows the newly inserted tubular to be engaged, generally by expansion, in an area of increased diameter so that when fully supported in the shoe, the wall thickness of the newly added tubular is in a recess and the internal well dimension is not reduced. These and other features of the present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from a review of the various embodiments described below in the detailed description and from the claims presented.